Have you been asking yourself what is a healthy gut diet? After the age of 40 and 50 our guts can start to give us problems with bloating, IBS and stomach pain.
Remember this formula: Variety of foods = Variety of microbes = Good health. That is all we have to do to help improve our gut health. The problem is most of us do not have enough of a variety in our choice of foods.
Most of us consume no more than 15 different foods in a week. This is not enough variety even if we hit all the food groups.
When I had to cut out a lot of foods because of poor digestion, it was the beginning of many health problems in my 40’s. I became intolerant to more than just food but also the environment.
Thankfully, with the right knowledge and repairing my gut lining, I can now eat a variety of foods.
This is not just about a processed diet vs whole food diet. Yes, a processed food diet is bad for our good microbes but a whole food diet that is not diverse can also be problematic for the diversity of our gut microbes.
And believe it or not there are still women who refuse to eat vegetables, and they are proud of it. I used to be happy to just eat fruit in my 20’s and avoid veggies because they didn’t taste good to me.
So not only do we all need to be more adventurous and try to eat different foods, we need to eat different varieties of the same food to improve our gut health.
Eating a Variety of the Same Foods
For example:
- carrots,
- mushrooms,
- potatoes,
- zucchini,
- tomatoes
Our ancestors ate a greater variety of foods than we eat today and they grew different varieties of the same food. This was good for the soil and helped protect them against potential crop loss and increased the nutrients available to them.
Today, agriculture farmers grow fewer crops and seldom do they grow more than one variety of the same crop.
Did you know that there are over 6000 varieties of tomatoes? Each variety has different properties and a different nutrient content. That is a lot of tomatoes! However, we can look for as many different tomatoes as we can find locally.
What Can You Do for a Healthy Gut Diet?
This week, buy three new foods you do not eat regularly. They can be foods you have never had or foods you like but for some reason never buy.
Here are a 3 things you can do to diversify your food intake:
==>Buy purple or red potatoes instead of white potatoes.
==>Choose purple or white carrots instead of the common orange variety which are always sold in the stores.
==>Look for different zuchini varieties which are numerous in the summer - fall season.
Check out my 21-Day Healthy Gut Menu Plan and start taking control of your health today.
Other things you can do for a Healthy Gut Diet:
- Go to farmer’s markets and talk to the local farmers. Tell the farmers that you are interested in trying different varieties of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes or potatoes etc.
- Shop a variety of stores and look for new grains and legumes too which can help you feed your many good gut bacteria for a healthy gut.
- Go to different restaurants to exerpience a variety of meals such as asian, mexican, italian, or greek restaurants if you can.
Then by doing these activites you will start having more energy and better digestive health.
I have included a helpful guide for you below. Please check it out by downloading it to your device.
Refer back to this post, PIN IT!
Reference:
Mark L. Heiman, Frank L. Greenway. A healthy gastrointestinal microbiome is dependent on dietary diversity. Molecular Metabolism, 2016; DOI: 10.1016/j.molmet.2016.02.005
Diversify - The Key To A Healthy Gut Portfolio - thedigestersdilemma.com
